5 QUESTIONS with Kindara co-founder Katherine Bicknell

Katherine Bicknell and her husband, Will Sacks, recently launched Kindara, a Boulder-based company that developed an app to measure a woman's fertility.

In a recent e-mail interview with the Camera, Bicknell, a trained fertility counselor, provided some background and a look at the future for this Boulder startup.

The following has been edited for clarity and space.

1. What led to your involvement in the creation of Kindara?

My mom struggled with infertility for 10 years before she was able to have me and my siblings. What she was missing was a correct diagnosis from her doctor about what was wrong. With more information about her cycle she would not have had to wait so long and would have been spared years of hardship. My own fertility issues (long, wonky cycles) had me looking for a natural and effective way to learn about and improve my own cycles, so when I'm ready to have kids I'll have the best chance at getting pregnant.

My co-founder, and husband, Will, is a data nerd and together we saw an opportunity to build a fertility platform that would help women manage their fertility in a whole new way -- using personalized data and support to help replace the confusion and frustration women so often feel, with a calm confidence based on knowing what's going on.

2. What types of data plug into the app, and what information is generated?

A woman enters her resting oral temperature -- which is called basal body temperature (BBT) and is a proxy for the hormone progesterone -- and other fertility signs like ovulation test kit results, and anything else she wants to track that may be related to her fertility (for example exercise, diet or weight) to create her personal fertility dashboard. Each user creates a dynamic infographic that tells her at a glance if she is fertile or not each day. This information is based on the daily observation of her own fertility signs, and is highly effective at pinpointing fertile days.

In addition the data can pinpoint problems with estrogen, progesterone and ovulation. Using Kindara, women can understand if and when they are ovulating and/or identify problems with their cycle that could make it hard to get or stay pregnant. Knowledge is power. Once women know what is going on with their fertility, they can take the actions necessary to meet their goals. It's empowerment through data.

3. How do you plan to generate revenue for the company?

The app itself is free, which makes it very accessible and useful to women. We're adding in paid expert support that will allow our users to get their questions answered by fertility experts right from their smartphones. Furthermore, we're going to make money by partnering with the best providers of fertility products and services to help our users understand and manage their fertility. The more data our users enter, the better we'll be able to recommend products and services that will help them meet their goals, and so everyone wins.

4. Do you have plans to develop an Android app?

Yes. Right now we are focussed on the iPhone app. Which we are building using an Agile development process. This means that we launched a very basic product and continue to add features and update it, based on our user feedback and engagement. Once we've proven that our model works on the iPhone, we will build an Android version and also a web platform so Kindara is universally accessible.

5. Do you intend to expand any of your other offerings, including the educational aspects?

Yes, our mission as a company is to help women have a better experience with their fertility, and so we're always looking for ways to get better results for our users. In addition to the expert support I mentioned above, we plan to add a knowledge base of FAQs, videos and articles into the app, so women can get their questions answered quickly and easily.

And the Expert Support will help a lot with education, too. For $19.99, women can get their chart reviewed, and all their questions answered personally by a fertility counselor for 30 days. This will add a lot of value for our users. One thing we have heard from women is that they want a place to get their personal questions answered by an expert, and they want to feel supported on the path to motherhood.

New coordinator pushes Buffs to work, play at level he expectsJim Leavitt has discovered this much about his new defense at Colorado: He has some talent with which to work, but his players need to put it in another gear. Full Story